


Plastic Flowers May Still Bloom

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: And me getting over it, Crushing, Edit: I'm orphaning this because I realized the Crush was a side effect of the Trauma, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, I am a biromantic lesbian and I'm ready to come out., Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, MASSIVE GODDAMN VENT, One Shot, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, all of this is real down to the color of her hair, because i'll be honest with myself thats what it was, but it's more of a lack of consent, hello, hey i just finished writing this in like a 1.5 hour cathartic spree, idiot in love, if I missed a TW I can't edit the tags after its orphaned and I'm sorry, that too, vent - Freeform, writing this did help me a lot though. accepting myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 18:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16749493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In middle school, I thought that romance was such a great thing. A little 12 year old, desperate for any connections, romantic or otherwise.A mistake was made. A horrible mistake, one that haunted my mind for nearly five years.Despite it all, healing is possible- even if it ends with a crush on your best friend.





	Plastic Flowers May Still Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, as a cautionary note if you didn't read all the tags.  
> None of this is fiction, and was a venting story that's slowly getting me back into writing after I gave it up as my dream.
> 
> I wrote this, unedited, in an hour and a half, straight through. It's 2:42 AM rn and I'm not sure I got all the TWs I could use into the tags. Please be careful if you're attuned to this kind of stuff.

When I made it to middle school, I was always looking around at all of my classmates. Kids I had known since I was four, kids I grew up with. I’d see them so happy and smiling in the hallways, I thought it would be nice. I had had two crushes before I made it to him. The first was my neighbor, one year older than me. I had admired him because he was always so kind, sweet and supportive of everyone and everything. I knew, from knowing him all my life, he cared deeply about things. I had never been close friends with him though, and quickly gave up. (By the time I was a terrified, self-aware Sophomore, he had become someone I looked up to as a role-model.)

The second crush, I knew even less than the first. I knew he liked soccer, I knew his name. I knew he played the flute; just as I had known my first crush played the trumpet. But that was all I really knew about him. I would admire his hair; I liked the way his voice sounded, how even in sixth grade it was just low enough to cause a thrum in one’s ribcage. I liked watching him play the flute, seeing the way his lips would move to adjust the airstream, visible even from where I sat on the other side of the band room.

Then I made it to him. He was the one that I had thought was The One. I started dating him in 7th grade, just as December had started. Similar to crush 2, I liked his hair, the shape of his face, and the way his jaw was proportional. When I was dating him, I aspired to be an author. I loved writing my own personal lore about him; soft blond hair that flew in wisps, blue eyes that reflected light like ice crystals. His likeliness, tall and thin and gangly, always made it into any additional character I would have in the background of my stories. Similar to crush 1, I would always stand in awe at how kind and caring he seemed to be. How involved he was with things that meant a lot to him. I loved how we shared interests; tender “love you”s sent back and forth at three o’ clock, just after we were dismissed from school.

It was fine, for the first two weeks. I felt elated, over the moon. The relationship was entirely online based. One of our mutual friends was crushing on him, and to avoid hurting her feelings, we had agreed to not tell her. In hindsight, it was a stupid decision. All of our interactions were online. Nothing really “happened” between us. In middle school, I loved roleplaying. Now I feel sick when I even think about doing it.

I know nothing happened between us. I know others have gone through much worse. I know there’s no reason for me to feel such anxiety over a relationship, to feel so scared of someone who’s never even physically hurt me. I know it’s stupid, how I feel scared of him, even now, almost five years after I started dating him. I dated him for three months. Three months shouldn’t have been long enough to burn, to scar, tear, and leave ruin and destruction in the wake. But it was.

Online, it had always been so simple. Cute. Short. So soft, tender, nice.

“I love you XD”  
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”  
“*Kisses you* You know I love you, right?”

It was when I asked him to stop kissing me that I developed the issues. Any message that started with * or included “nuzzles” or “cuddles” would immediately fill my mind with fear, my heart with cold dread. I would go numb, and cry several hours later.

What hurt the most would be when I asked him to stop. “Please don’t do that.” Or, “please don’t kiss me. Not right now.”

That hurt, that being ignored, when I was terrified, desperate to stop, but he would never quit, is still with me. Five years later and I don’t trust myself to not cry immediately in a relationship. The idea of kissing someone causes the immediate feeling in my legs to run, my head fills with static, and my heart is frozen in ice water. Five years later, and I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone else. He has been my first and my last relationship to date.

On par with ignoring what I asked, would be the plain-old ignoring.

I would respond to his posts; If he was sad, I would ask how I could help. If he was angry, I’d try to calm him down, the same if he was anxious. If he was unsure of himself, I’d try to offer my best encouragement. If he was unsure about how much he meant to the world, when he was contemplating suicide, I stayed up until the sun joined me, messaging him, hanging onto my computer, scared to sleep in case he needed help, in case he needed me, in case he needed someone to listen to him.

But he would never come to help me. It was online; we followed each other. It was middle school, we all had issues. But what hurt in the relationship, was when I was anxious. When I was scared. When I had locked myself in the bathroom after a day at school, holding my school-issued Chromebook and a pair of nail clippers, ready to make a final goodbye post and then cut my own body to ribbons because I was that full of self-hatred and thought I was that worthless, do you want to know who was there? Who came to my aid when I was sobbing, sitting in my favorite comfort spot in the dark, home alone? It wasn’t my boyfriend. It was three strangers, who I’d talked to, but never interacted with much. It was three strangers, who became friends, and formed a close bond over the following months, and for one of them, years.

It was that being ignored that formed the first tear, but I never told anyone. I’ve still never told anyone how much it hurt for someone I’d pledged my heart to, for them to just ignore me like I was a leaf on the ground, or a long-forgotten scratch on the wall from a long-forgotten incident. It hurt, it hurt so bad, and I never told anyone because I was determined that the relationship would heal on its own. That everything would be fine, that it’d all get better.

And then the next day at school, he didn’t say anything. He never hugged me. Didn’t so much as hold my hand. Didn’t ask if I was alright, or if I was doing okay, or if either of us wanted to meet up after school at the library, or the local Sonic, or anywhere. Didn’t acknowledge it happened. I didn’t know if he even cared.

“That it’d all get better.” Do you know what happens if something made of clay is put into a kiln, but there’s an air bubble? Even the smallest air bubble, just a small pocket. The thing explodes. 

He had ignored me. I kept pledging to him, even after that incident, but he never came back. Oh, he’d still keep up the “ur cute lol XD” and “lol *kisses*” but whenever I was sad? So anxious I couldn’t think right? So unsure of my place in the universe I was willing to step in front of oncoming traffic just to see if anyone would stop? It was only ever a string of unanswered emails and private posts with no response. And no interaction after school, or during school, or before school.

I kept that up for three months. Three months as my mental state slowly deteriorated, became more strained. I tried. I thought that He would be the fabled One that everyone talks about. I tried to imagine he was still who I thought he was, the calm and cute boy I had loved at the beginning. The one who played the Alto Saxophone, who I defended from bullies, who had eyes lighter than the bluest sky and hair paler than straw. I tried to imagine him as the adorable kid in green who had sat next to me out of nowhere at a lunch table in 6th grade, and proudly said, “you’re in my math class!” and then left. I tried. At some point during February, I lost it. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore, with a bunch of tests, and issues in some of my classes, and my own steadily failing mental health. I couldn’t. I had nothing left, I had run myself into being a shell.

I broke up with him over email. I broke up with him, three months after it started. In seventh grade, at god-knows-when in the morning, I typed my email, blubbering and in tears and in a fit of one of the first total breakdowns I’ve ever had. I’ve had a total of five. Emotional outbursts so strong and violent I end up hurting myself during them. I remember in the entire email, a recurring theme was “It’s not you, it’s me, this is a matter of my health, I can’t do it, It’s all my fault, you’re fine, I’m not emotionally stable enough, It’s me, not you. Maybe we can try again in high school?”

I’m a Junior in high school. I wish he would leave me the hell alone. I wish he would never sit back down at my lunch table again, because he still does. He touches me on the shoulder sometimes, and I feel like my skin is being boiled wherever his hand touches, and I feel sick and on the brink of a meltdown. (It's worse when he tries to be cute; touching my nose and saying "boop" or god forbid he try to touch my neck and even the thought makes me feel violently ill.)

But you see, recently, I’ve developed something I never thought I’d be able to experience again. After five years of constantly tearing my own heart to shreds out of fear, I’ve somehow managed to glue and sticky tape and reattach all these tiny, tiny, shattered pieces of my soul and my heart back together into this mass that’s capable of at least trying to love someone romantically again.

I have a fourth crush. They’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. They have the softest brown hair. An amazing taste in humor and video games and television shows. I’ve known them long enough I’m pretty sure I know most of their medical history. I’m capable of talking with them for hours and hours, and never get bored of their presence. I’ll never get tired of them. I can, within fifteen minutes, comfortably talk to them about something I’ve had an issue with, and then go back to joking after they help me smack my mental health back into check. Those bits of conversation aren’t unlike a mother reassuring a child that “yes, if you touch the hot stove it will hurt.” Though, so I’m not sure it counts.

They’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. They don’t think they’re that much. I think they’re amazing. I know there’s a chance they’ll read this. They are the single person I’m currently willing to trust this lumpy, sad looking hunk of emotion I call I heart with. They have beautiful eyes; they’re an amazing shade of brown. “Boring Brown,” or “oh boy, dirt!” as they’ll say, but I really wish that they could see what I see.

I don’t see “boring brown.” I see a deep brown, warm and comforting and helpful. I see brown eyes that are warm and inviting. They’re not boring. When the light catches, there are streaks of the most vibrant gold I’ve ever seen. When there’s no light to catch, they feel like they give off their own. 

I know my fourth crush might never happen. I know she doesn’t know I like her in the way that I do; I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how tightly I hold those sleepover memories when we’ve fallen asleep holding hands or cuddling. I don’t know if she knows how much I appreciate her when I lose my ability to speak to anxiety, and end up stuck making vague noises and gestures, but she can understand me.

I do know, though, that she knows I’m bisexual. It might be a solid 85-15% split towards women, but I’m bisexual. I know that she knows that I’m crushing on someone. I don’t know if she knows it’s her.

I know there are people who have gone through worse than I have. I know there are people who never got the chance to heal.  
I know that, I am more whole than I have been in recent years. I know that I’m still healing.

But I’m hoping that, just maybe, I’ll be able to heal with someone there by my side.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I know I talked some pretty heavy stuff but as outside works
> 
> \- I'm fine  
> \- After I finished writing this and had come to terms with myself, I did send him a message over facebook telling him to please stop contacting me.  
> \- If you're going through shit, and it feels anything like the gaslit abusive manipulative BULLSHIT that got discussed/referenced here, there are resources available online.
> 
> Edit: Two, three months after I posted this now, I've realized that while I did have genuine feelings for my friend, they fit more into the heartily supportive, "You're A Wonderful Person And It Frustrates Me That You Can't See What I See" type of love for her. We are still friends, we discussed it, and both of us talked it out like some weird therapy session and realized "oh man that wasn't a Crush crush that was just some weird trauma shit lmao sorry m8"  
> I'm orphaning this, but I'm happy to say I'm healing and I'm better.
> 
> In the story I hadn't learned that there's a. difference between romantic and sexual attractions. I am a biromantic lesbian- heavily towards women, but if Just The Right Guy comes, hey, maybe I'd date him. Who knows.  
> I'm happy with my label- I'm happy I've found my box. I'm happy that my dumb, partial mute ass still has my Friend-Since-Toddlers with me. I'm happy I'm healing, and I'm happy that my "sad lump of muscle I call a heart" is now a bustling metropolis filled with love an potential.
> 
> I'm happy to report that I genuinely believe you all can get better too. Maybe different stories, but similar concepts- and I *know* you can do this. I believe in you. <3 PMA, lads.


End file.
